Malka Baran (z”l)
January 30, 1927 – May 7, 2007
Malka Baran, whose birth name was Mela Klin, was born in Warsaw on January 30, 1927. When she was one year old, her parents, Isaac and Bela settled in the southern Polish city of Czestochowa on the Warta River. Malka also had a younger brother, Henek.
Malka’s happy childhood was brutally cut short when the Germans invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. By Sunday, the Nazis captured Czestochowa. Eventually, city’s Jews were forced into the the Czestochowa Ghetto.
On Yom Kippur 1942, the Germans began the mass deportations to Treblinka concentration camp. On the first day of the deportations, Malka’s mother was sent to one side—she later died in Treblinka—while Malka, her father, and her brother were sent to the other. Isaac and Henek were forced to work on the railroad. One day, they failed to return from their labor assignment; they had been shot along the railroad tracks.
Malka and the other remaining Jews were forced into the so-called Small Ghetto. In 1943 she and others living there were sent to a labor camp where they were forced to work in a munitions plant in terrible conditions. She survived bouts of boils and typhus. Malka and other women at the camp helped conceal a toddler whose mother had smuggled him into the camp. A German foreman discovered the toddler, but he decided to let him live.
Malka was liberated by the Russians in January of 1945. She and her friend Shoshanka encountered a kindly Jewish man from Leningrad who was a supply officer in the Red Army. He invited Malka to join his family in the Soviet Union, but the plan fell through. As Malka and Shoshanka traveled with a Red Army unit to meet up with the supply officer, they found themselves all alone on a dark night with dozens of soldiers. They expected the worst, but, an officer watched over them, covered them with a blanket, and protected them. This evidence of human kindness touched her deeply and helped her begin her emotional recovery.
Malka returned to Czestochowa for a while, then made her way to a displaced persons camp in the American zone of Austria. Here she met her future husband, Moshe Baran, who was a partisan during the war. Malka and Moshe went to Israel before leaving for the United States. They settled in New York, where Malka worked as a preschool teacher. She later earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees and went on to become the director of the preschool where she taught. After Malka and Moshe retired, they moved to Pittsburgh to be near their daughter and four of their grandchildren. (Information from Yale’s Fortunoff Library)
More about Malka
Flares of Memory: Stories of Childhood During the Holocaust
Malka Baran | Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies